1. Field of the Invention
The invention is concerned with holding sheets or batts of relatively soft material such as insulation against a plate of a relatively rigid material such as metal. More particularly the invention is concerned with a retainer for accomplishing such a holding operation and with a method of attaching insulation to a plate. Still more particularly, the invention is concerned with such a retainer and method as applied to a vehicle firewall plate or a cab wall plate.
2. Prior Art
Current practice in installing batts of insulation against firewalls and the like involves welding the head end of a multiple number of pins or nails at a predetermined location on the plate with the sharp end of the pins extending from one side of the plate. A batt of acoustic sound and heat absorbent insulation is then pushed over the points of the pins and thus held in place against the plate. Push on caps are generally forced over the sharp pins ends with the caps being of the self-locking variety. The push-on caps hold the insulation in place as well as to protect persons from injury by the sharp pin ends. Generally, the pins are prewelded to the plates and the plates are stored until needed for final assembly on to a vehicle or the like. Damage to the pins has sometimes been encountered when the plates are stacked or handled. Also, those people handling the plates must be very careful to avoid injury to themselves when handling them. Further, since the pins are generally prewelded to the plates, the plates have required extra room for storage and the like. Further yet, the welding operation takes a good deal of time and requires the talents of a trained welder. Another disadvantage of the current practice is that the configuration of the pins becomes an assembly (is fixed with respect to any particular plate) once the welding has been completed. Thus, separate plate assemblies must be prepared to accept insulation on different parts thereof.
The present invention eliminates completely the welding operation and allows stacking the plates in a very compact manner without any pin ends extending therefrom. Thus damage to the pin ends is eliminated. Further, the plates can if desired, have holes predrilled into them over substantially their entire area thus allowing their use for a number of applications or only specific preselected locations thus allowing easy and safe stacking and storing along with quick conversion to usable form by insertion of the insulation retainers of the invention in the holes. That is, in some applications one may make use of some of the holes in the plates to position studs therethrough while in other applications other of the holes in the plates will be utilized by positioning of studs therethrough. When final assembly of the plates is desired to provide studs with generally sharp ends thereon extending therethrough a unique blind-assembled rivet is used as the retainer for the insulation and a plurality of these rivets are assembled through any selected plurality of the holes in the plate dependent upon the size and shape of the insulation batt to be used on the particular plate. The insulation batt which is assembled to the plate may be relatively easily changed in thickness as by removing it and removing the blind-assembled rivets which were holding it in place without the necessity for breaking any welds and then new rivets can be inserted in some of the holes in the plate, which rivets have studs of a longer or shorter length than the original studs, and then insulation material which is either thicker or thinner than the original insulation material can be inserted over the new and different length studs. It is clear that any holes which are not utilized to attach the selected insulation will generally be closed off or covered by the remainder of the insulation blanket or batt.